APPLICATION: SECTORAL AND THEMATIC SPOTLIGHTS 79
be no more than associations of prominent individuals and their followers or ‘fan clubs.’” The absence of opposing ideology-based governing platforms has led to a situation in which the administrations of both parties avoid imposing negative impacts on organized labor and prefer indirect taxation for mobilizing domestic resources. As a result, the tax-to-GDP ratio is very low in Ghana, while economic rents from the extractive industry are an important source of government revenue. The highly visible and lucrative infrastructure projects are mostly financed through foreign (sovereign) loans, government bond issues, and public-private partnerships. Social tensions are heightened because of high unemployment and indebtedness. Inequality is increasing. Atta Mills (2018) concludes that Africa needs political parties that are more inclusive and reflect the socioeconomic aspirations of broad segments of the population. Despite the finding of Rothstein, Samanni, and Teorell (2012) that poor governments undermine trust in state institutions and thereby decrease popular support for state-sponsored redistribution, previously inactive socioeconomic groups need to find their voices and demand representation and reforms that can lead to reductions of both poverty and inequality. For the social contract to hold, elites should be made more accountable to their citizens—by protecting open media, promoting greater civic participation, and conducting regular performance audits.
Social Accountability and the Social Contract The World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People (World Bank 2004) helped put social accountability into mainstream development practice by making citizen and civil society agency a critical factor in improving public policy and service delivery through accountable government. This effort has led to interest among practitioners and scholars alike in the relationship between social accountability and the social contract between citizens and the state. The creation in 2012 of the Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) 13 in the World Bank, for example, was inspired by a view of the Arab Spring as manifesting a citizenled critique of a failed social contract, and a desire for its renewal in which social accountability would be an important instrument for change.14 (See box 5.1.) Although this rationale was not informed by empirical study, it strongly suggested the potential utility of a social contract frame in understanding citizen-state relationships, aided by social accountability practice. In fact, immediately following the Arab Spring in 2011, the World Bank awarded a US$500,000 grant to support formation of the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in the Arab World, a regional network for advancing social accountability practice, as a signal of this move.15
